John Bartow
john at winhaven.net
Thu Mar 25 18:11:17 CST 2004
+.5 on the corruption - I don't buy it as reason to not use lookups but you scared me a little before I got to the end and I really have to cut the nay-sayers some slack they're so far behind here - gotta please the crowd too! :o) Score: nay-sayers 2.5 / sayer 7.5 -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Ken Ismert Sent: Thursday, March 25, 2004 3:54 PM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: RE: [AccessD] Framework Discussion - set up question Drew, >Lookups are just part of Access' table design, and are relatively >irrelevant when you use Access strictly as a BE. ... But is that >going to affect anything using that .mdb as a BE? No. Try this: 1. Create a blank database. Save it as Test.mdb. 2. Turn off Name Autocorrect (Tools, Options, General) 3. Import all tables from Northwind.mdb. Note that the Orders table has lookups defined for the CustomerID, EmployeeID, and ShipVia fields. 4. Rename the Customers, Employees and Shippers tables. Reopen Orders. You will now get intermittent errors saying the recordsource specified in the lookup doesn't exist. 5. Create a new blank database, and save it as TestLink.mdb. Link to the Orders table in Test.mdb. Open the linked orders table. You will also get the same intermittent errors, especially after re-opening TestLink. (My test platform is A2K.) When a linked table is queried in the front end, Access tries to open ALL the lookup queries associated with that table in the back end. Errors in those lookup queries will propagate to the front end. This can play havoc when trying to recover corrupted data. I personally experienced this when corrupted data in the lookup tables was preventing data in the main table from being read. Only after opening the table in design mode and removing the lookup queries were we able to get a partial recovery. In short, data is too important to risk with such an error-prone feature as table lookups. The performance degradation issues, while valid, are secondary. The same applies for subdatasheets. If you want to use lookups, make a query, and define them there. -Ken -----Original Message----- From: DWUTKA at marlow.com [mailto:DWUTKA at marlow.com] Sent: Thursday, March 25, 2004 1:59 PM To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com Subject: RE: [AccessD] Framework Discussion - set up question I don't get that 'main' argument. <snip> -- _______________________________________________ AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com